It was recognised that for crops humanity depends on, we can’t assign a single owner

Plant Genetic Seed Banks have been around for many years with the first major one developed in the USA at Fort Collins in Colorado at Colorado State University, where I have spent some time involved with seed physiology and storage research, many years ago.

A lot more has happenend since then and most recently with the development of the Millenium Seed Bank project at Svalbard in Greenland, which has received a lot of publicity, as well as seeds from Australia.

For the major cereal crops - rice, wheat, corn etc there are a few of these facilities often associated with major research facilities. CIMMYT has had a wheat seed bank [ along with similar cereals] basically since it commenced as a research centre.

THE future of the world’s wheat is reliant on the seed lines in the massive vaults at the CIMMYT research centre just outside Mexico City where 150,000 lines of wheat seed from primitive wild races to the latest purpose-bred varieties are safely stored. Assembled over the past 40 plus years from countries around the world, including Australia, the facility’s temperature and humidity-controlled vaults house a diverse collection of bread wheats, durum wheats, triticales and barleys. It is the largest collection in a network of 11 international genebanks around the world that, in total, hold 600,000 accessions. CIMMYT wheat germplasm collection head Thomas Payne said the material held in the collection in Mexico was an important resource for plant breeders around the world. He said interest in the world’s botanical resources began in the era of exploration when early explorers sent botanical materials back to their “home countries”. But it was only in the last century that the importance of conserving the materials in a viable state for long term use was recognised. “People started to recognise the fragility of genetic resources and the fact that varieties could, and were, becoming extinct,” he said.Mr Payne said that prompted a flurry of plant exploration and germplasm collection around the world for much of the 1900s, especially in the period between 1960 - 1980 as the Green Revolution was developing. “But that tailed off in the 1980s because nations became aware of genetic resources within their territories,” he said. “There was a recognition ultimately that was codified through international treaties that stipulated the genetic resources within the boundaries of a country belonged to that country.”The resulting Convention on Biological Diversity recognised that the genetic resources within the territory of a sovereign nation were the property of that nation. “It was enacted because countries were concerned, for instance, that a big pharmaceutical company would come in and make millions of dollars out of acquiring a medicinal plant,” he said. It was also a significant issue in Australia, as we both use the genetic resources from overseas acquired through exploration eg for new crop and pasture varieties as well as a major unexplored country for plant genetic resources [ see the recent Australian newspaper article of April 2014 on a very promising cancer drug from the north Queensland rain forest].But Mr Payne said an inadvertent consequence of the convention was it stopped germplasm sharing – in particular, sharing of agricultural crops. “So it was recognised there needed to be another legal instrument to facilitate the exchange of germplasm and the sharing of agricultural crops,” he said. “A wheat variety that has been developed over the last 10,000 years and bred over the last 50 or 100 years has parentage representing many different countries. “So how can you say who is the legal owner of, say, triticum aestivum - bread wheat – which originally evolved 10,000 years ago in what is now the Caspian Sea area of Iran. Is Iran the owner of all bread wheat in the world? “We know many important varieties have come from Australia. Would you say Australia is the owner? “So it was recognised that for crops humanity depends on we can’t assign a single owner.”In the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture which was ratified in 2004 and came into action in 2007, agricultural germplasms were elevated to a special status that recognised their global significance. “The intent of the treaty is to open up the sharing of agricultural genetic material,” Mr Payne said. “It says the recipient of materials from CIMMYT or any of the genebanks under the treaty are free to do anything they want to with the material. “They are encouraged to share the materials they develop from the materials they receive from CIMMYT. “They are also free to patent or restrict access to the material. But if they choose to restrict access to the materials they have to pay a certain percentage of the income they receive into an international benefit sharing fund.”Australian scientist and CIMMYT’s Generation Challenge Program transition manager Peter Ninnes said Australia was one of the first countries to sign up to the international treaty to share genetic resources. Mr Ninnes has been instrumental in putting in place a structure from which Australia benefits from the genetic diversity of the wheat at CIMMYT. “Australian breeders make their selections in the field in Mexico, the seed goes into quarantine in Australia and is then made available to the Australian breeding teams. That is how Australia gets access to the genetic diversity,” he said. “The intention is that the information that comes out of the assessments in Australia feeds back into the program at CIMMYT.”These facilities have also been instrumental in research work on seed storage - the ability to develop systems and practices to preserve seed viability and their intrinsic genetic message in the DNA for extended time periods. And to also research those seed and crop lines that cannot be easily stored - the so called recalcitrant seeds [often tropical] that do not respond well in general to cool dry conditions, common for storage of many seeds incl wheat. Recalcitrant seed management is a story in itself![ part of this article appeared in the online edition of Qld Country Life April 2014 ]

What is present in the world’s largest wheat collection in CIMMYT’s genebank

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Analysts with Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research have released a report that predicts global demand for fresh water will soon outstrip supply, according to an article on CBS MoneyWatch.

Stylised water supply system

"Water scarcity is a pressing people and planet issue," the report stated. This is hardly new to many working in the sector, or those in aid / development areas.

According to the article, 768 million people around the world have no access to clean drinking water and 2.5 billion are without proper sanitation, noted the article, while about 2.5 percent of all water on earth is fresh water.Addressing these issues is a priority for the Water and Sanitation Program [ see more at www.wsp.org] and many simple measures can be effective, especially on the sanitation side. But fresh water supply is more difficult, with wasteful water use a big issue itself, especially in developed countries.

The report states that humans have already reached "peak water," at or approaching the limit of renewable freshwater supply, the article reported, and half of the world's population will face "water stress" conditions by 2030.

According to the article, as many as 50 nations can be expected to be involved in conflicts over water by 2050.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The proportion of days in the United
States that are warmer than the long-term average increased from 42 percent in
1964 to 67 percent today, according to an analysis of 3.2
million temperature anomalies over the last 50 years.

Enigma.io, a New York City-based company that specializes
in searches of information from public databases, examined data from 2,716 U.S.
weather stations to track the temperature anomalies. The company found that
since 1964, temperature anomalies characterized as warm or “strong warm” have
increased by an average of .5 percent a year.

Enigma’s data show, for example,
that in 2012, 84 percent of temperature anomalies in the U.S. skewed on the
warm side. The company forecast that by the 2030s more than 70 percent of
anomalous temperatures in the U.S. are likely to be higher than the historical
average, rather than colder.

Would similar data be apparent for Australia?

My guess is that similar data could be derived fro Australia.

So much for the climate change deniers, especially in both the US and Australia.

Australia is about to change ideas about how to combat climate change by removing a carbon tax and to replace that with so called direct action efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions.

Most scientists do not think the scheme would work. Australia will be doing less to mitigate climate change.

With recent international reports arguing that temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions that are driving that issue are increasing more rapidly, it is time to also accelerate efforts at reducing impacts, or we are all up the creek without a paddle!!! Sorry............our kids are.